


Farther Than Pleiades

by FTPleiades



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Original Fiction, Other, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 04:46:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FTPleiades/pseuds/FTPleiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the future of an alternate Earth, one scientist discovers the secret to traveling between alternate universes, and founds a group to explore them: Project Saturn. However, there isn't as much money in exploring similar universes, and so Project Saturn desperately throws money at the discovery of a world colonized by humans with no memory of Earth: Leeda.</p>
<p>These are the interviews of Dr. Ibn al-Rasheed, the lead researcher of Leeda, by idealistic journalist Amelia Palmer. Together, they will explore the politics, culture, technology, and history of this alternate world in one massive, multimedia experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

 

**INTRODUCTION**  

Leeda. Today, the name brings forth images of fantastic peoples and ideas of a world totally foreign to our understandings, one of eldritch whales the size of skyscrapers, railways that cover the world like our own highways, and a thousand other ideas, cultures, and customs alien from our own. Yet, just seven years ago, the word meant nothing, and the world was unknown to us. Were it not for the efforts of Dr. Ibn al-Rasheed, that might still be true.  
  
When he began his modest expedition, Project Saturn was dying. Originally created to catalog and explore parallel universes made accessible through the Fujikawa Transuniversal Drive, the organization had begun to lose its funding and power as the universes they discovered either turned out too primitive and useless, or worlds as advanced as theirs, Earth Alpha-1, which resulted in growing power of those governments who united together without the influence of Project Saturn. High ideals simply don’t make much money.  
  
I myself was never aware of this problem. When I was brought in five years ago, I was a journalist in York who couldn’t shake her small-town “All-American girl” reputation from growing up in backwoods Quebec. Even Project Saturn needed journalists, especially those who were foolish enough to have high ideals like their own, and I was snatched up.   
  
That was when I discovered Leeda. Unlike the worlds before it, this one wasn’t just another Earth, but another planet entirely, though still inhabited by humans. A rare find, to be sure, but it was my superior, Dr. Hugo Reeve, who realized its true potential. For Project Saturn to survive, he believed, it would need to make money, and the best way to make money off such a project was to show people what they had never seen before. I wasn’t surprised to find out that his doctorate was attained in business.  
  
So that’s what we did. For five years, while Dr. al-Rasheed continued to catalog Leeda, we spread the word. Novels, movers—they called them movies on Alpha-1—music, whatever; they all poured into the eighteen united universes and made Project Saturn rich beyond its wildest dreams. By the time Dr. al-Rasheed returned, his work finally done, Project Saturn was sending out a new expedition every month to find more of those kinds of worlds.  
  
The whole time, all I had done was release little tidbits of the stories and follow up on the findings of everyone above me. I was, after five years, still just a journalist. That was why, when I was recalled to Alpha-1—a world where Canada apparently still existed—to conduct the exit interview with Dr. al-Rasheed, I wondered if they had found the wrong person. Sometimes I still wonder if it had been a slip-up, or if my personality made me a pick for the schmuck who had to go through the long cataloging process.   
  
Now, long after we both finished, I believe it was the latter. Project Saturn was founded on hard facts, but what it needed, especially at that time, was people. Real people, ones that the public could connect with and want to see more of. Dr. Al-Rasheed was exceedingly good at documenting cold facts, and I was dumb enough to still have high-minded ideals. I like to think they made the right choice.


	2. Interview 1.1

 

**INTERVIEW 1.1**

  
**Location:**  Project Saturn Headquarters, Toronto, Dominion of Canada, Earth Alpha-1  
 **Date:**  1 October, 2408  
 **Time:**  08:09  
 **Interviewer:**  Amelia Palmer ID99873-035  
 **Interviewer’s Notes: [The man who sits across from me is a far cry from the pictures they gave me from before his trip. Dr. Ibn al-Rasheed’s cheeks have thinned and hardened, and his entire face has taken on a darker, worn color. His eyes are no longer anxious and thoughtful, but piercing and intelligent. He smiled at me when he entered our plain, gray room, but has otherwise not said a word.]**  
  
 ** _State your name, please._**  
  
 **[Speaks in Arabic]**  
  
 ** _Yes, I understand Arabic, but for official purposes this interview will be conducted and cataloged in English._**  
  
 **[Sighs]** Ibn al-Rasheed.  
  
 ** _Where are you from, Mr. al-Rasheed?_**  
  
I was born, raised, and lived in Damascus, within the Ottoman Empire, on what you refer to as “Earth Zeta-314”. Since joining Project Saturn eleven years ago, I have resided in a domicile here in Toronto, but have spent most of my time in survey ships.   
  
 ** _Care to elaborate on that?_**  
  
Is this really necessary? I was told that this interview was a follow-up to my work on Leeda, not an expose about myself.  
  
 ** _I don’t make the questions, sir, I just ask them._**  
  
Very well. Project Saturn came to my home world just over eleven years ago, when it was decided that my own Earth was advanced enough to be met in an open and diplomatic manner. At the time, I was working in the University of Damascus, as a Professor of History. When the great ships appeared in the skies over Constantinople, all I worried about was whether it would affect my class. That was how I thought at the time, you see. Damascus was my whole world, and even the capital of my great nation was too far for me to care.  
  
The only time I had been been outside the empire’s second-largest city was on a school trip to Constantinople as a child, and had stayed in my city ever since. Some of my colleagues used to joke that I was so interested in history that I forgot to see the world it was made in. They weren’t too wrong.  
  
All this changed when the Project Saturn ships appeared. They brought aboard delegates from the capital of they—correctly—surmised to be the most powerful in the world. I suppose that the organization was a bit different back then; too used to finding only one flavor of worlds. This was back before the discovery of Earth Papa-1178, so translators had to be physical, and the team hadn’t thought to bring along anyone who spoke both Arabic and English.  
  
Anyway, my uncle had, somehow, managed to be part of the first contact group.  **[Chuckles]**  The man did not know a word of English, and neither did most of the “first contact team”, which mostly consisted of civil servants that the Project Saturn members had mistaken to be leaders.   
  
You see, on my world, English is the devil’s language. It is the language of those evil marauders who crashed upon the gates of Constantinople thirteen times over three hundred years, until at last we drove their greatest fleet into the sea and destroyed their armies so totally that the English—at last—gave up their dreams of ruling over us like one of their African colonies. Even in the 24th century, few self-respecting Arabs or Turks speak the language. That was, except for me.  
  
I was sitting in my rkhysh (1) home, reclined in my favorite chair with the news projecting itself on the wall, when I got the call. My uncle, Muhammad, was panicked, desperate. He begged me to go to the university, that “they” would pick me up there. I knew he did some work in the capital, so I took my, as you call them, automobile to the university green and waited.  
  
I cursed myself the whole way there, that I was so cowardly to hope that what waited for me was a squad of soldiers or a flight to a secret bunker to wait out the crisis. Instead, one of their ships descended on the university, and I was too stunned to fight as they pulled me into the ship and took off.  
  
Before that day, I had never entertained the thought of space travel. It was cheap, sure, but what was out there for me? We Ottomans had colonies out in the inky black, of course, but they were crowded and filled to the brim with misguided scientists and desperate poor looking for a better life. Even a vacation to one of the orbitals couldn’t compare to a night of reading in a coffeehouse, sipping on a nargileh (2).   
  
 ** _So what changed?_**  
  
 **[Laughs]**  Nothing, at the time. When I looked down at Earth, I was even more terrified before. There I was, trapped in a metal tube with the nothingness of space pressed all the way around me where I could be safe at home on Earth once more. I am not too proud to say I was terrified. I was not born to be a cosmonaut.  
  
They took me aboard a bigger ship, what they told me later was a  _Pondskipper_ -class (3). A small name for a ship the size of a city block. They took me up into a plain room like this one and bombarded me with English until they were sure I could speak it. My uncle, well, all I can remember is Muhammad grinning the whole time, in a nervous way like he thought they would hit him if I didn’t turn out to be the man they thought I was.  
  
After that… hours and hours of translating. Learning words I had never even heard before and turning them into Arabic until I could barely speak, my throat was so sore. After that, well, you know the rest. I translated, they were happy, and managed to get us into this union of universes that Project Saturn seems to love so much, no matter how much it abuses them. I joined the project two months later, and I hope you have records of the rest.  
  
 ** _What convinced you to join Project Saturn? Was it the translating?_**  
  
 **[Smiles]**  Not quite. It was indeed part of the translating, but not to my own people. It was when the Project Saturn researches started asking me questions about my own world. What was different? Why was this world so strange? What was different about the Ottoman Empire? Why were there no Americans?  
  
Telling them about the victory in Vienna in the 17th century, the thirteen crusades of the English, the Grand War and the dominance of the Ottoman Empire even until today brought about a pride I had forgotten I even had.  
  
You see, teaching history can be difficult to make interesting. By the time my students reach university, all the basics have been covered; few surprises remain. I can tell them fine details, but no one since childhood is wowed by our victories over the English or the great space race with the Bharati.   
  
But to see the expressions on the researchers’ faces, the way that telling these stories could silence a room of them… I knew right then that teaching in a classroom was no longer for me. Deny it all I liked, but I needed to get away from Damascus and start to learn. And that is what I did.

 

* * *

 

 

**Footnotes**

 

1 Cheap, simple.  
  
2 Hookah.  
  
3 The  _Pondskipper_ -class was the first class of fully-functioning transuniversal ships employed by Project Saturn on a regular basis.


	3. Interview 1.2

**INTERVIEW 1.2**

  
**Location:**  Project Saturn Headquarters, Toronto, Dominion of Canada, Earth Alpha-1  
 **Date:**  1 October, 2408  
 **Time:**  09:48  
 **Interviewer:**  Amelia Palmer ID99873-035  
 **Interviewer’s Notes:**   **[The procedure for interviewing isn’t set in stone, and Dr. al-Rasheed is a man who enjoys walking around. I follow him out of the interviewing room to a long hallway outside, on that looks out the gargantuan Project Saturn building and toward the sparkling waters of Lake Erie]**  
  
 ** _So, how did you find Leeda?_**  
  
Well, after I joined Project Saturn and went through their little bootcamp for a few months, I was placed among teams of researchers to learn “the ropes”, as they called it. I spent close to four years serving on those teams, cataloging mostly primitive or dead worlds, while the more advanced were left to the experienced researchers from Earth Alpha-1 or Gamma-28. I learned back then how to observe passively, to wait and see what the peoples we discovered could teach us—a far cry from teaching, I can tell you.  
  
After years of this, I had moved up in rank enough to request my own team. Not for anything big, however, as I still too junior to command any significant influence. I was allowed to lead a small team to one of the “dead” Earths, to run a simple catalog and record it for future interest. For all intents and purposes, it was to test how I could lead the others under my command.  
  
We skipped into the universe in early April, 2365; or 2401 in Alpha-1. The Earth, as noted by the probes sent months before, was a dead, radioactive cinder, like so many other universes. **[His eyes darken]**  Too many other universes.  
  
The story was a fairly common one; the humans had moved out into the solar system, but carried with them the same prejudices and rivalries found on Earth, and no amount of colonization could solve them. The war had been devastating: we found massive debris fields throughout the asteroid belt and around the Earth and Alqmr (1). The moons of Titan, Ganymede, and Europa seemed to have bits of civilization as well, though whether on or around them we were unsure of.   
  
Earth was all but obliterated, with the few humans and other fauna settling in the small, isolated zones with little damage or radiation. My beloved Damascus was nothing more than a darkened hole. Though it was, of course, not  _my_  Damascus—from all indicators, the universe had changed well after the United States had been founded, and the balance of power was, as per usual, centered in the West and in East Asia.  
  
 **[Pauses]**  What was unusual were the signals that we eventually picked up from Mars. How foolish we had been! Our organization, no matter how objective it tried to be, was thoroughly Earth-centric at the time, and we were not even instructed to check over Mars. When we arrived at the fourth planet, we quickly realized our mistake.  
  
Advanced cities stretching kilometers into the sky dotted the mottled green and gray surface of the planet, once again teeming with life. Our ship let down its stealth cloak—by this time, our contact with the universe known as Papa-1178 (2) had come to fruition—and we announced our presence to them over an open channel, and several Martian vessels met us and escorted our little ship to one colossal space elevator over Olympus Mons.  
  
 ** _This was when you learned about Leeda, correct?_**  
  
 **[Nods]**  Once we had gone through the usual first contact scenario and established ourselves as a non-threat, they were happy to tell us of the past thousands of years of history, in which a small colony on a terraformed Mars had risen from almost nothing to greatness by denying settlers from the dying Earth as the entire system collapsed into chaos. Their neutrality in the war had bought them enough time, time to rebuild civilization over such a long period and rise to greatness once more.  
  
What was significant, however, was their possession of a system of star maps. These maps revealed that, while the Earth was dying, scientists desperately sent out sleeper ships to every possibly-habitable planet they could think of, once the Martians started to shoot down any headed toward their planet.  
  
 ** _And one of those sleeper ships was bound for Leeda._**  
  
Correct. Or, as they called it, Eden.  **[Laughs]**  Westerners are not creative in their naming abilities, though I admit that, at the time, the description may not have been far off. It was a “green” planet orbiting around a medium-sized, yellow star with a stable atmosphere and just the right mixture of gases for humans to breathe. It must have seemed like a miracle to those who discovered it, so I suppose the name is appropriate.  
  
The ship for Leeda had been one of the last sent as well, and therefore the most advanced. It also was the one with the most complete record on Mars. After all, thousands upon thousands of years had passed on Mars—enough that one advanced civilization rose up on the planet, failed, and another one took its place! The fact that a record survive at all was still amazing. Once we received it, there was little doubt in my mind that we had to find this planet and see for ourselves what the outcome would be.  
  
 ** _What about the Martians? If they had the records, why hadn’t they visited the planet already?_**  
  
At this point in time, the Martians had just rebuilt their previous civilization, which had been advanced but not capable of interstellar flight. This new one was, but at such dreadfully slow speeds that the Sol system’s influence only extended to the Centauri systems and little else. Only our ship could make so great a jump without the years spent in cryosleep that the sleeper ships had gone through.  
  
 ** _Project Saturn reported that they supported your endeavor from the beginning, but some of your team say otherwise. Is that true?_**  
  
I… don’t see how that is a relevant question.  
  
 ** _According to my superiors it is._**  
  
 **[Sighs]**  Project Saturn was underfunded and over budget back then. They were stretched thin on projects that turned out to be useless or pointless. It was a miracle that even my small team and I were cleared for our exploration. That’s all I have to say.  
  
May I continue about Leeda?  
  
 ** _You may._**  
  
We arrived in the system two weeks after making receiving the clearance for exploration, as it took us time to gather the necessary materials. When we arrived, I did not know what I expected. Perhaps another failed world, devoid of human life. At best, yet another primitive world that hadn’t advanced beyond swords and mysticism.   
  
Instead, what we found was… not quite anything like we had imagined. What lay waiting for us in the Eden System—what they themselves call the Ohm System—was an entirely new civilization! Not even one that, like so many other colonies, was simply based on Earth. Somehow or someway, these people had been purged of all knowledge of their ancestors and built a new world entirely of their own!  
  
It was breathtaking. I had not been so sure in my goal since joining Project Saturn; that I would endeavor to discover, research, and catalog all I could about this new world. At last, I had found the kind of world that I had been looking, one that would offer up enough surprise for the rest of my life.   
  
 ** _What did you find there?_**  
  
 **[Smiles]**  Well, if I am to tell you that, then we must start at Leeda’s beginning, thousands of years before. [Turns away from the window and begins walking down the hallway we stand in]You may want to prepare yourself, Miss Palmer. This tale will take some time to tell, but I promise… it will be worth it.

 

* * *

  
  


**Footnotes**

  
1 The moon.  
  
2 The mysterious universe of humans far in the future who gifted Project Saturn with much of their modern technology.


	4. Interview 1.3

**INTERVIEW 1.3**

  
**Location:**  Cafe Borgia, Toronto, Dominion of Canada, Earth Alpha-1  
 **Date:**  1 October, 2408  
 **Time:**  11:40  
 **Interviewer:**  Amelia Palmer ID99873-035  
 **Interviewer’s Notes: [After gaining clearance from my superiors, we have moved from the, as he calls it, “repressive” headquarters building to a local Italian restaurant to conduct the interview. He talks between bites of food while other patrons look on.]**  
  
You have to understand, Leeda’s time frame is much different from our own. Though they were dumped on the planet without any real memory of Earth, they still had the accumulated survival skills of thousands of years of hard lessons learned by the human race and our predecessors. Whereas Homo  _neanderthalis_  may have started to form hunting packs first, the Homo  _sapiens sapiens_  that settled Leeda began agriculture almost immediately. While the planet’s unusual climate caused much of the early agriculture to fail—thus giving rise to the various nomad cultures—many others succeeded and formed the basis of civilization in only a thousand of years or two, rather than the hundreds it took on Earth.  
  
Of course, this rapid advancement had its disadvantages. The pets and edible plants we take for granted on Earth were the results of thousands of years of selective breeding to gain the traits that make them so valuable to us. Without this advantage, the humans on Leeda had to take whatever they could find. Luckily for them, “Eden” lived up to its name in some aspects: companion animals were, after a bit of coercion, made to accompany humans and plants suitable for mass consumption were found. It wasn’t perfect, but ever stubborn, they made do.  
  
 ** _What about Leeda’s first civilization?_**  
  
 **[Waves his hands dismissively]**  I’m getting to that. Due to a confusing and chaotic period of mass extinction and the end of an ice age, precise numbers are hard to come by about early humans on the planet. What is known is that humans, some time after landing on the planet, made their way to a particularly marshy river valley in the northeast of the westernmost continent. Though located in the north, a variety of environmental factors—including a large island that acted as a “shield”—the weather was about as warm and humid as a world like Leeda can be. The fourth planet in the system and 1.3 astronomical units for its sun, Leeda is rather colder than our own Earth.  
  
Anyway, the marshy landscape turned out to be home to what can be best described as a mix between rice and potatoes: a small, tuber-like planet high in starch and other nutrients grown underwater that could comfortably feed a large population with relatively little effort. Much like the simple foods grown between the Tigris and Euphrates or on the banks of the Nile, the food here provided for the first civilization.  
  
 ** _Tet._**  
  
Yes and no. Indeed, Tet was one of the cities, but the civilization itself would be better named the Rathe River Valley Civilization.  
  
 ** _Like the Indus Valley Civilization on Earth._**  
  
 **[Sighs]**  If we must play the comparison game, yes. What one must understand about Leeda is that, though the humans may have developed some similar cultures or customs, it has less to do with memories of Earth and more the simple nature of humans.  
  
In the valley along the Rathe River—a translation of a modern Leedan word for the river, as what the civilization called the river is unknown—a civilization rose up around this tuber-like crop that grew well in the marshy valleys between the high, tree-covered hills that surround the river.  
  
Leeda, being younger than Earth, has many more jagged mountain ranges than our own world, but the Rathe River Valley was one notable exception, with gentle, sloping mountains and a warm climate as opposed to the rest of the planet.  
  
Thus, with long growing seasons and shorter winters, the peoples there founded a civilization consisting of many city-states around the valley. The foundation of the city-states was based upon the tribal nature of the peoples who had settled there, who had been part of many different tribes who lived in relative peace by avoiding each other and sticking to their parts of the river.   
  
If we must compare it to civilizations on Earth, imagine a cross between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. The city-states were primarily based around a trading outpost either on a commonly-traveled road or by the Rathe River—or one of its tributaries—which were used to traffic goods throughout the valley. Most of these goods were agriculture-based, but a few surviving artifacts reveal that this early Bronze Age civilization traded in pottery, basic tools, fine metals and gems, and even exotic animals.Records, primarily found in tombs and on temples, do not indicate whether the early city-states possessed a common language, but they seemed to understand each other well enough to trade and fight with each other.  
  
 ** _What of Tet?_**  
  
I was getting to that. Tet—no relation to the Vietnamese holiday—is, of course, the most well-known of the early city-states, for obvious reasons. The city itself rose from simple means, not as an agricultural giant—the land the city sat on was too rocky and dry for the valley’s primary crop—but as a trader’s haven. The city was in the center of the valley as far as culture and climate went, and thus was a natural meeting place for traders traveling through the valley, particularly by river.   
  
The city began as a simple outpost and grew quickly into a sprawling city of several thousands—very large for its day. However, the constant trade disputes and wars that erupted through the valley took its toll on the early city. After some indeterminate number of years, city-planners apparently grew tired of these constant conflicts and endeavored to protect the city from them. Though the exact leader has been lost to time, it is known that the people of Tet constructed a large wall around the city, made of sun-dried earthen bricks. The wall was, perhaps, only 2-3 meters high, but was an impressive fortification for the time, enough that attacks on the city apparently ended.  
  
Without the threat of destruction and death looming over their heads, the Tetians quickly expanded their city in size and strength as the goods flowed in. With prosperity and safety came the basics of organized religion and a more complex language, though they would lack a writing system. The city continued to grow and expand, even more so after bronze was found in the mountains behind the city.  
  
After more than one hundred years of growth, a figure emerged who would change the Rathe River Valley forever: Torren. Not much is known about the man himself. Whether he was a high-ranking priest, king, nobleman, general, or simply a rich man is unknown, but it is known that, by 8 BCE he had gathered enough influence to command Tet’s army.  
  
The army itself was needed, as at the time the cities on the upper banks of the Rathe were fighting with the cities on the lower banks. The lower cities were prosperous from farming and metalworking while the upper cities made their power in raw materials and pottery, as well as other simple crafts. The problem was that the lower cities—like Egypt, lower on the river by geographically north—had little military experience to speak of, despite their advances in creating bronze weapons.  
  
Torren, with his Tetian army, thus made them a deal: Sell him their bronze weapons and he would defeat the upper cities and bring peace to the Rathe River Valley. From tomb inscriptions found in the lower cities, it is believed that they sold him nearly all of their finished bronze weapons, with which he conquered the upper cities one by one.  
  
However, like a true leader, Torren was not eager to back down once he was finished. Turning his men downriver, he then cut a swathe through the lower cities with their own weapons and quickly conquered them. Thus, over a period of eight years, Torren was able to forge an empire over the entire river valley. This would become known as the First Tet Empire.  
  
 **[He pulls out a tablet computer of simple design and brings up a digital map of the First Tet Empire]  
  
**

  
[](http://i.imgur.com/rNN71k6.png)

I apologize for the relative simplicity of this map. We were not allowed to use more advanced technology due to limitations on our expedition and the early maps I created are… crude, at best.  **[He smiles sheepishly]**  They get better later on, I assure you.  
  
 **[He points to the flowing curves of the Rathe River and the various city-states that line it]**  
  
Now, the First Tet Empire is something of a misnomer—a name that sounds fantastic, but doesn’t accurately describe the situation. The empire itself was more a collection of city-states which paid tribute to Tet and were bound by Tet’s laws, but otherwise were relatively free and independent.  
  
 **[He brings up an identical map, except this one includes geographic features of the valley on it]  
  
**

[ **** ](http://i.imgur.com/5qnBeKQ.png)

  
As you can see, the geography of the Rathe River Valley varied heavily from place to place. Most of the cities, save those few in the upper region here  **[Points to Aphen, Unter, and Ipschad]** , were spread out across individual valleys separated by large hills, mountains, plains, or swamp. Travel between them all was primarily done by boat, save for a few scarce overland routes, so controlling them directly was simply out of the question.  
 **  
 _So how did Tet keep power over them?_**  
  
Simple, by playing them against each other. By all accounts, Torren was not the best administrator, perhaps why his empire only lasted 89 years in total. He was, however, skilled in playing people against one another for his own gain, and managed to do so within his empire. The soldiers helping to guard and control the upper cities were from the lower cities, and vice-versa. Governors were the same, and in general Torren did his best to mix the cultures so that the cities would hate each other more than Tet. By all accounts, it worked.  
  
 ** _What was life like within the First Tet Empire?_**  
  
Well, there is a reason that the modern dating system on Leeda begins with the empire’s founding, putting it at 0 CE—Common Era. The founding of the First Tet Empire was the first major attempt on Leeda to found a modern, organized society governed by a written law code, organized under a religion, and ruled from a central location. Similarly, it was the first nation in Leeda’s history to have anything resembling a codified and united culture between different tribes of people.  
  
Life in the First Tet Empire was, in many ways, more organized than in most of the early societies found on Earth. Due to being built primarily in marshy swamplands, the cities of the Rathe River Valley had to be meticulously organized so that buildings would not sink into the muck and so standing water could not gather and spread diseases.  
  
This meant that most of the cities were either built on stilt-like foundations—which was really on practical for the small, trading post towns—or had to be organized around a system of sewers and baths that could provide fresh, clean water and dispose of dirty water. The great city of Sussana, located on the lower end of the Rathe, was a ready example of this kind of engineering.  
  
Archaeologists on Leeda found well-preserved ruins of a city built around extravagant and large canals that ferried dirty water into the swamps around the city while carrying clean water from the Rathe River and its tributary, the Esther, into the public baths and even a few homes, likely owned by noblemen.  
  
Thus, life in the First Tet Empire had to be tightly organized to keep up the public order necessary to construct and maintain these complex cities. Even in city-states without codified law, records have been found of a general system of punishments for crime and enforcement by city guardsmen or army soldiers.   
  
 ** _Sounds oppressive._**  
  
Perhaps, but it worked. Though society was tightly-controlled, the plagues that in the past appear to have swept entire cities clean appear to have dissipated or even disappeared in some city-states. Like how Tet’s walls gave people the peace of mind to grow and expand, so too did these restrictions allow the culture in the river valley to grow beyond simple sustenance—just living from day to day.  
  
Artistic expression is perhaps the most enduring symbol of this, particularly from many finds within tombs beneath the ruins of Tet, Sussana, and other cities. Pottery, made from dried clay, was a major outlet of artistic expression, as well as crafting wood into tools of worship and play, though surviving artifacts of those type are, understandably, rare.  
  
 **[Sighs]**  It truly is unfortunate that I cannot expand more on this period, beyond the simple facts of their lives and governance. Too much of that time was lost in the following period of strife or through decay. Even the names of the cities—besides Tet and its colony Vet—are unknown and were mostly named by the archaeologists who found them after nearby, modern villages, names in their own tongue, or, in the case of Ecksed, after a family pet. Such are the limitations of Project Saturn: we can travel through universes, but not through time.  
  
 **[I move to talk, but he waves his hand and shakes his head]**  
  
But don’t let me drone on about my worries. We historians tend to bemoan more than we examine these days. Anyway, where was I?  
 **  
 _Artistic expression._**  
  
 **[Smiles]**  Ah, right. This ties in well to Tet’s influence over its empire, as well. By all accounts, Tet was not a particularly artistic city, but a very religious one. Wherever Torren conquered, he brought that religion with him, sometimes bey force but other times the conquered peoples simply converted, as they saw his gods as more powerful than their own.  
  
The Tetian religion, too, was delightfully simple compared to others of the day. It is difficult to explain in a language native to Earth—as I am in fact translating from an ancient language on Leeda to a modern language on Leeda to English—but, in the most simple sense, the religion was based on a principle of three actions: action, inaction, and reaction. They held three gods to these terms: one, Fuhr, was the god of action and controller of the sun, of love and sex and lust, of planting, of trade, and of—though it is not totally clear—creation, or at least of making new things.  
  
Ish, meanwhile, was his opposite: the goddess of reaction. She was the goddess of the moon, of children and parenthood, of harvest and commerce, and of art. You see, she was the reaction to Fuhr’s action, and together they represented the ever-moving circle of life of constant actions and their reactions.  **[Chuckles]**  This Earth’s Isaac Newton may have enjoyed this philosophy.  
  
The third god was given no name, but is referred to on inscriptions and in art as a sort of “Other”. It—for it had no gender—was the god of what the people of Tet saw as the ultimate evil: inaction. It was responsible for death, destruction, laziness, and stupidity. The people of the Rathe River Valley, after all, had fought hard for their civilization to rise so soon after landing on the planet. To them, inaction was the ultimate evil. Even the laws codified in Tet have samplings of this, as bystanders who did not intervene to stop acts such as murder or robbery were found as guilty as the perpetrator.  
  
 **[Shakes his head]**  I apologize, I find this concept rather intriguing, and got caught up again. I really am sorry.  
  
 ** _It’s fine, really…_**  
  
So you say. Yes, anyway, their religion, for all its ideals, was very simple: action, reaction, and inaction. Three gods, three concepts. For a time when some religions had pantheons that numbered more than a hundred, the concept was simple enough for the common people, rather than just the priests, to understand. Much as on Earth, simplicity means popularity, and soon the Tetian religion could be found all around the river valley.  
  
Now, as I said, the people of Tet were not very artistic, but the peoples who adopted their religion, particularly in Sussana and the upper city of Ictlit, were. They expressed their new-found religious fervor in the best way they knew: through art.   
  
Sadly, most of the true art, primarily songs and dances that were, judging by surviving depictions on pottery, very popular are lost to us for all time. What survived still provides us with a wealth of knowledge.  
  
Pottery, though resembling what was made on Earth, took on a very different meaning to the people who lived on the Rathe. Clean pots were used to haul clean water from the Rathe or its tributaries—which they, at the time, did not recognize as separate rivers—to the communal baths or to homes, where it could be used in cooking or for drinking where the swampy marsh water could not. Clean water was not just a status symbol, but a symbol of life and prosperity, so the vessels to carry it in had to be made to the highest standard.  
  
 **[He brings up a picture on his tablet of a brown, sun-baked pot with what appears to be a once-colorful painting of giant man building the clouds in the sky]**  
  
Whether the designs on the pots were meant to be specific charms or simply religious scenes meant to invoke the favor of Fuhr or Ish is unknown. They do seem to have been delicately made, and colored with dyes rare to the region this one was found in, near Sussana. This would indicate that they held these simple paintings in high regard, and revered their gods for giving them clean water to drink and cook with.  
  
Surviving wood carvings tell a similar tale, of various wooden tools and playthings from the period typically having more colored inscriptions of their gods, or sometimes what appear to be tales of the feats made by Fuhr and Ish, typically at the expense of the Other.  
  
This indicates that utilitarian and leisure items were valued as high as crops, spices, or raw metals, which speaks, obviously, volumes about the society of the First Tet Empire as a whole. Though I do not like to cloud my judgment with fantasizing about the past, I can say that it was an impressive culture and society for such a turbulent time period.  
 **  
 _So why did it fall?_**  
  
 **[He takes a final bite of his pasta and smiles]**  That will have to wait, I’m afraid. Come, this eatery is growing crowded, we should go somewhere that you and I may think.


End file.
